While we understand the expressiveness of music at a listener’s level, it takes years of experience and dedication to the art to be able to have a fun and endearing conversation with an old friend, without saying a single word. Maestros Purbayan Chatterjee and Rakesh Chaurasia, have extremely diverse and impressive experiences with music and their experiments with it always push boundaries of what’s possible.
Being good life-long friends, they have seen growth in parallel ways between each other. However, their new album together, known as ‘Saath Saath’ (literally translating to ‘Together’) is testament to their musicianship and how fluent they are with the language, that they can have a fun light-hearted conversation with each other, through their music.
As is tradition, the style of classical music is heavily reliant on improvisation. Then again, if someone decides to question the musicality and technical details of the track, they’re little faults to find. None actually. They both come from extremely musical backgrounds and their experience shows. Here, however, the focus is on their conversations.
The idea behind the album is one that outlines the intensities of the days through the usage of ragas. ‘Yaman Drut’ is one that can be found towards the end of the day. Being one that captures the energy of the night, it makes it quite an energetic and happy-sounding track.
The improvisation and playing of the two is more of a conversation than anything else. Its two good friends having a blast, doing what they love. You can hear it in their phrasing and melodies they craft. What’s not to love about it?
To celebrate their album release that will be on September 9th, they’re performing at Carnegie Hall on 14th August. Carnegie Hall is a musician’s holy land and they will be accompanied by Maestro Taufiq Quereshi on Percussion and Maestro Ojas Adhiya on Tabla for what is sure to be a spectacle to witness.
The musical catalogue and experience of everybody involved on this show is nothing short of legendary and it is a concert that is certain to be an experience of a lifetime.
Listening to the Maestros, it’s clear that they’re leading music forward with their incredible expressiveness. The music is human and it shares the personalities of everybody involved. It celebrates a friendship and musical journeys of those friends, making it an incredible work of music for everybody.
